I think part of the problem is that, officially speaking, everyone should be receiving the minimum wage anyway if they're working so it's hard to legislate for work placements given that, whilst legal, paradoxically, they in themselves contradict a basic employment law.

It's how the whole country is, though. Internships are just an early inheritance that doesn't require the parents to die. And it shows how much money is sloshing around in the upper reaches of the economy when this situation has managed to develop.

Internships are not the problem. They're merely a symptom of what's wrong.

entry-level jobs have turned into unpaid slave labour, you're supposed to do a series of these in the hope that, by chance, you happen to be around in one of these companies just at the time when they decide to throw money at actually hiring someone, even though they could just get another intern in for free. or you could work yourself to death or slaughter your own and your parents bank accounts by working for free until you have a shot at a paid job a step above the entry level. brilliant.

I looked at him a bit confused and he said "Oh sorry, Is Harry not your name?"

I said "No, it's Will actually, but don't worry, really."

He replied "Then why would the office say Harry's bringing the envelope? Why did they call you Harry? [pensively]...Oh HAIRY WILL...HAIRY Will is bringing the envelope, oh THAT's what they said, I seee...Well Thankyou Hairy Will".

I'll point out where my mind changed over this as I used to think exactly the same. Alot of rich kids in my university expected this kind of preferential treatment, they just didnt get it. It doesnt happen on the scale you think it does. On occasion, sure, but what do you expect, its doesnt impact the rest of us plebs - poor people have the chances, however much people with shitty jobs want to think theyve been shafted by some rich kid. Its just lazy.

I'm not making any guesses on your own circumtances but I'm more concerned about people way lower down the ladder than myself. I earn an average wage, have a decent house and decent education. I couldn't afford to do a work placement so my attempts to work in the media failed which is a bit shit but that's not the greatest loss in the world.

The fact that middle-class/lower middle class people miss out on the opportunities the rich do is a bit shit but not the worst traversty in the world. It is however symptomatic of a society where the people at the bottom of the ladder are continually denied access to opportunities and once options that might fix this, like entry level jobs where they might get a chance to show what they can do, being syphoned off among the rich, basically further reinforces a society with a massive gap between the rich and the poor where structures are in place that mean the gap can't be closed and social mobility is ever more difficult as every ladder gets pulled up.

As far as I'm concerned auctioning off work for young people and trying to balance it off by donating to charities for the disadvantaged is like justifying kicking dogs to death by donating to the RSPCA.

where Britain's media, fashion and arts industries, as well as the political and policy sector, are concentrated.

If you did, I think you'd realise just how much of an exclusive, metropolitan world this is now becoming.

The improvement of comprehensive school education and the expansion of university places levelling the field, promoting competition and widening the skills base has meant that the way that middle and upper classes have re-asserted their priviledge is by encouraging a business-fuelled drive to the bottom, making vast sectors of Britain's employment an unpaid one - in many cases exclusively so for those under 30.

It's getting worse, not better, and it's that's even more reason to try and stop it, rather than just acquiescing to it through half-arsed cynicism.

You say that unpaid internships, getting jobs as favours, having advantages due to priviledge doesn't exist on the scale we says it does. Well, in London (and vast areas of the UK), it does. And it's a growing problem.

But in the absence of _vikram to stir things up unnecessarily, I'll go for it.

My question was about whether the concentration of certain industries in London was a contributing factor to the collective position of employers. ie. would the job market be more competetive in favour of employees if there wasn't such a consolidation of 'creative industries' and 'political power' in London?

But even if, if if, it were a particular contributing factor, could anything be justifiably done about it? Maybe. Maybe not. I dunno.

Something like that, anyway. Didn't bother to mention it initially cos I've not properly decided what I think. And I have something of a (unjustified, in truth) rep as a foaming London hater, that asking something like this was only going to fan the flames of.

This obviously /might/ apply to concentration of certain industries elsewehere. All eggs in one basket rarely being the best policy and all that. But that's possibly countered by things like critical mass and economies of scale when thinking globally. Dunno...

I wouldn't argue particularly with your theory, although I think it's more simply to do with the amount of demand for the jobs (or to get into an industry) at all rather than concentration of those jobs in an area.

I would say there's definite benefits in that a pool of skilled workers tends to develop in that area to support the industry and it becomes far easier to get employment in the same industry if you want to leave/lose your job.

Take F1 as an example - entirely Eurocentric and particularly centred around the Thames Valley/M4 corridor in England. If one team (say Arrows or Super Aguri) goes bust, the employees know they have a good chance of being able to find employment in a similar role without having to shift their family hundreds or thousands of miles.

I think wherever the media etc. were located supply would still outstrip demand for employees so employers would set the terms unfairly.

It would help with some things though - at least if there were media or music companies near you could work there and live with your parents and not have to pay rent. So it'd improve access a bit, just without addressing the main problem.

industries are not manual and are (hnnnngh) 'creative'. It's very likely that when, say, the dockyards of Glasgow were in full flow, and labour was flooding to the city, that workers' wages went down due to the oversupply.

I meant to say that the creative industries in London have traditionally been the preserve or the aspiration of those from better off backgrounds, and so therefore the closed shop is much more likely to perpetuate.

I guess what I'm trying to say is people get annoyed at people in well paid positions but want that position / want other people to be in them positions (and the privileges it entails). The problem is these arent infinite, even if trees were made of candy floss and there were honey rivers. If everyone was rich, everyone would be relatively poor. There has to be discrepancy in wages (people on insane amounts of money arent being discussed here), unless you want communism. Does that make sense?

some of the worst offenders are arts organisations, who pay their employees moderately and genuinely can't afford to pay for an extra entry level job. So they use interns instead, which is terrible. I used to work at an arts organisation as a low-paid marketing assistant. The education assistant, working at the same hours and level as me, worked unpaid for a year, just in the hope of getting a low-paid job at some point. It was appalling.

I wouldn't be interested in the job on offer myself - it just strikes me an entry-level position in a record company would be a real opportunity for a young person with an enthusiasm for music to have a career and, in a world where so many young people have no education, employment or training it shoudln't be limited to people of certain backgrounds.

There is a secondary point that a job is a job and you shouldn't even be doing it for free, let alone having to pay for the privilege. There's a real scope for companies to make a real difference to levels of poverty in this country simply by giving entry level jobs that don't need degrees to people without degrees and paying them the minimum wage.

Instead graduates with work experience get the basic jobs, graduates with no work experience work for free and the people without qualifications slip further from the radar. It's fuck all to do with wanting a Disney paradise - I just don't think it's unreasonable to strive for a world where anyone who does a day's work gets a day's wages and, if there's an entry job that doesn't need qualifications, anyone can have a reasonable chance of getting it. If thats too much to ask something is seriosuly wrong with the world.

We're not saying that everyone should earn the same amount of money, just that the amount of money a person's parents earn shouldn't still be the biggest factor in determining whether they reach their potential in life.

it’s also because, as someone who wants to see humankind progress to better and better things, it's surely advantageous for everyone if the world is a more meritocratic place, rather than one that is run by a self-perpetuating, un-competitive cartel.

If opportunties to work in those sectors are limited to people from certan backgrounds and experiences (i.e. people who can afford to do internships) that ultimately creates a huge social imbalance where only certan people and certain perspectives are represented, whch is very problematic in terms of making society as fair and equal as possible.

The opportunities are there for everyone to have. Its not some kind of closed system. How do people want these opportunities to be given out? Everyone in the country gets put into a lottery and picked out? Thats not a meritocracy is it?

By being advertised, applied for, shortlisted for interview on merit and then the most suitable candidate getting offered the job at an acceptable level of pay. That is a meritocracy.

In what sense do you think the opportunties are there to have and in what sense do you think it's not a closed system? How, for example, would you suggest a 20 year old single mother whose parents live in Newcastle could get a job at a record label, major media company or in the Houses of Parliament if all the opportunties are in London and no entry level positions pay a salary?

You can take anyone at a point in time and say THESE PEOPLE ARE BEING FAILED WE MUST GIVE THEM THE SAME OPPORTUNITIES. They went to school, they had the chance of college, and they had the chance of university. I dont want to trot out the cliche of working class boy but I've never felt any problem doing exactly what I wanted at any time. If you feel differently and more empathy for the masses, so be it.

For the record everything I've said is because I work around youth employment in deprvied inner-city areas and know pretty well how such inequalties work. But, as I say, that's not relevant to either paragraph of what I've written.

For the sake of argument, let's say the single mother is 21 and has just graduated from university with a first degree. You still havent' really explained how she'll manage to work unpaid in London without family support for childcare. Or indeed how a system where jobs aren't advertised, aren't given out on merit and aren't paid equals a fair system that's open to all.

It's a very real example of a large excluded group of people who struggle to get employment 'cos of the current system. It's more colleagues' department than mine but I've worked with very bright single mothers with degrees who really struggle to find work, particularly in certain fields 'cos of this. I'm not boredly plucking hypothetics from the air here but listing an accurate example of who struggles under these systems.

It's easy to claim society's fair if you pretend the people who are excluded from it don't exist. It's also a very, very dishonest way of arguing that undermines any point you try to make.

How are oppportunities based on merit, if internships are being 'sold' in lieu of actual jobs? No-one's sugesting a lottery, or cmmunism, or any of those things.

theguywithnousername @ 12:41 shows quite clearly the result of this.

It's not that ``people get annoyed at people in well paid positions but want that position``. It's that people get annoyed at companies who effectively 'sell' jobs (or even merely job oppportunities) to the highest bidders.

and said it happens on occasion, but in no way is this the general way these things are run. Some dickhead getting his daddy to pay for them isnt going to keep someone from getting where they want for the entirety of their existence. Just because some divvy from some no mark town doesnt have EVERY opportunity EVERY time he wants it doesnt mean the system is oppressive.

Do you know what I had to do when I did a placement at a museum? Sleep on a floor of an acquaintaince and work at nights. Please tell me if I'm one of the lucky few whos enveloped in the golden grail of life? It really didnt seem like it at times.

I don't think it particularly fair on you that you had two jobs but nonetheless you did something quite a few people couldn't do. Hell, you did something I couldn't do. Due to a disability I'd rather not go into sleeping on a friends' floor wouldn't be at all practical for me so I'm not sure how I'd have been able to afford to do that placement, let alone people far worse off than I am.

Then when you factor in people with dependents (ill relatives, people born late in their parents' live with elderly parents, people with children etc.) the list of people that opportunity is closed off to is starting to mount.

Your argument appeaers to be "I did alright under the current system so who cares if others are excluded?" Which would be sort of understandbale if it weren't for the fact it sounds like you were fucked over a bit by the fact they wouldn't just give you a wage.

The whole system is so institutionalised - we had to work experience at school as part of our curriculum. How do you differentiate between work experience and internships? Even if you said employees had to pay you if you worked for anything over a week, they'd just fudge it by counting each week as a separate instance or something shady.

If you do a work experience placement at school or Uni you're already registered as a full-time student and, in the latter, receiving tuition fees and living expenses as part of your course, so it's not registered as employment.

If you're not a student you're unemployed. If you're working over 15 hours a week when unemployed that's classified as a job and you're not entitled to benefits therefore you should be receiving financial compesation at at least the minimum wage.

she could alternatively offer to do it for 14 hours a week so she can still claim benfits. It depends how the company is and whther she's prepared to gamble on them saying she can't have the job but might be worth asking if she thinks they'd be open to it. (Check it is 14 hours first though - can't remember figure off the top of my head)

And what's worse is the fact this goes on in Parliament all the time. I was working on a campaign late last year and 90 percent of the Parliamentry Assistants were interns who could afford to get experience in Government, whilst others who have a passion for politics have no experience so it's less likely that they can climb the ladder and do something they love.

insofar as - now rich (and sometimes stupid), well connected people now have an extra avenue to get into these kinds of jobs. No longer do they need to know someone working for a record company, they now have an option for buying their way in.

This is why it is opressive. Not because one particular role has been taken from that. Its that more opportunties are being created for rich people, who already have plenty of them anyway.

This means (i imagine) that there will be less positions for people without money/friends in high places to get these roles.